Shortly after Carlisle and the district round it had become English ground, and part of
the see of Lindisfarne, St. Cuthbert himself visited his new possessions. A day or two
after St. Cuthbert's arrival, as some of the citizens were taking him round for the
purpose of showing him the walls of the city, and a fountain or well, of marvellous
workmanship, constructed by the Romans, he suddenly became disturbed in spirit, and
leaning on his staff, he bent down his face sadly to the ground, and again raising himself
up, he lifted his eyes to heaven, and groaning deeply, he muttered - "Perhaps at this
very moment the hazard of the battle is over." When questioned by the bystanders, he
would say no more than, "Do you not see how marvellously disturbed the air is? and
who among mortals is sufficient to search out the judgment of God ?"

Next day, a Sunday, he preached, and the
burden of his discourse was, "Watch and Pray, Watch and Pray," which his hearers
misapplied to the expected recurrence of a plague, which had recently ravaged the
district. In a few days came a solitary fugitive, who announced that "the Picts had
turned desperately to bay as the English army entered Fife, and that Ecgfrid and the
flower of his nobles lay a ghastly ring of corpses on the far-off moorland of
Nechtansmere." [This battle is generally reckoned as having taken place 20th May
685].

Inquiry revealed the fact that the king fell
on the very day and at the very hour at which St. Cuthbert bent over the old Roman
fountain at Carlisle.

It would be most interesting were it
possible to identify one or other of the ancient wells with which Carlisle is
honey-combed, as that which the local antiquaries of the seventh century took St. Cuthbert
to see: some have suggested one or other of the wells within the area of the castle, but a
more probable suggestion is the old market well, now filled up and lost, which was in the
roadway of English Street, opposite the shop of Messrs. C. Thurnam & Sons.

On the moorland of Nechtansmere there fell
for ever with King Ecgfrid, in 685, the Northumbrian supremacy over England. Mercia at
once struck for independence; Galloway arose, and chased the Northumbrian Bishop Trumwine,1 out of Whithern, which stands, Bede says, "by the arm of
the sea," i.e., Solway; "which parts the lands of the English and Scots," -
proof that in 685, if not long before, the district around Carlisle had become English
ground, though not part of the kingdom of England. It still remained subject to the fallen
Northumbria, which had vitality enough to capture, in 756, Alcluid; and thus all
Strathclyde, except Galloway, became tributary to Northumbria, which was, however, too
weak to retain its rule. The inhabitants of Strathclyde thus got left to themselves for a
century or so, during which their country was the scene of much confused fighting, in
which English, Scots, Norsemen, and Danes, all took part.

The weakness of Northumbria allowed that
kingdom to fall an easy prey to a new race of invaders, - the Danes. Between 867 and 869
they conquered Northumbria, and dismembered it; Deira, now Yorkshire, they seized and
occupied; Bernicia they made a tributary. Halfdene [Halfdan] was the Danish leader, who,
in 876, occupied Deira, and he extended his ravages into modern Cumberland. He laid
Carlisle in ruins, so that for two hundred years it laid waste, and large oaks grew on its
site. On the dismemberment of Northumbria by the Danes, Carlisle and the district round
it, or Carliol, which we cannot doubt is defined by the diocese of Carlisle, as it existed
prior to 1856, fell to neither English nor Danish rule. It turns up incorporated with
Strathclyde proper, and with Galloway, under the name of Cumbria. One Grig, king or regent
of Scotland, i.e., of the Scots and the Picts, is said to have brought this about by force
of arms; but marriage with a British princess, rather than conquest, or perhaps the two
combined, must have been the cause of Grig's success. After Grig's death we find there was
some relationship between the kings of Scotland and Cumbria.

Meanwhile the English and the Danes had been
fighting with great vigour. Alfred the Great had commenced the attempt to reduce to
English rule the territory known as the Danislagh [Danelaw], where Danish laws and customs
prevailed. Edward the Elder, King of the English, continued the warfare, and, in 924, he
wrested Manchester from the Danes, whereon the whole of the North laid itself at his feet,
not only Northumbria, including the Lothians, but the Scots and Picts of Scotland; and the
Britons of Cumbria chose him to be "FATHER AND OVERLORD." The Britons of North
Wales had done so before, and thus Edward, King of the English, became Overlord, or
Emperor, of the Britons and the Scots. This transaction is the famous "Commendation
to England of Scotland and Strathclyde." Fierce has been the war of pens that has
raged over it: Scottish historians can ill brook to own that, in 924, Scotland declared
itself vassal to England, and their energies have been directed to the whittling away of
its importance. But it was the foundation of all the claims made by Edward I to Scotland.
At the time it was of but little practical importance: the Overlord, Edward the Elder,
died almost immediately. War at once broke out all over the North, and lasted, - spite of
a peace made at Dacre, in Cumberland, where Bede tells us there was a small monastery,
until Ethelstan [Athelstan], King of the English, in 929, defeated Constantine, King of
Scotland, and Eugenius, or Owen, King of Cumbria, at the battle of Bruanburgh
[Brunanburgh, 937]. Eugenius, or Owen, whichever may be his name, fell in this battle,
whose site is unknown.

In 945 Dunmail [aka Donald], "the last
king of rocky Cumbria," fell out with his Overlord, Edmund the Magnificent, King of
the English, who at once fell upon Cumbria, laid the whole of it waste, and handed it over
to Malcolm, King of Scotland, on condition that he would be his ally by land and sea.
Tradition says that the decisive battle between the English and the Britons of Cumbria
took place at Dunmail Raise, and that King Dunmail fell there. Other accounts say that he
escaped, and died peaceably at Rome, some years later.

To briefly review these events, which are of
great political importance in the general history of this country: King Dunmail was, by
virtue of the Commendation of 924, vassal to King Edmund. He revolted against his
Overlord, who took his kingdom from him and granted it, in 945, to Malcolm I, King of
Scotland, as a feudal benefice in the strictest sense. Cumbria thus became a fief of
the Crown of England, but not a fief held within the kingdom of England; it was
without that kingdom, and had always been so.

Nothing is recorded of Cumbria for many
years, except that in the year 1000 it was laid waste by the English. At this time it was
the chief rendezvous of the Danes in Britain. It is doubtful whether the English attack
was on the native Cumbrians or on the Danish settlers. This rendezvous-ing of the Danes in
Cumbria would be the time when they made extensive settlements in the district now
Cumberland and Westmoreland, which may yet be known by the termination "by."
There are some sixty-three of these. Like the "tons," the English
"tons," they occupy the best of the country, running in a circle from Appleby on
the south-east, along the Cumberland plain to Allonby on the Solway, and cropping up again
at Ponsonby.

In addition to this Danish colonisation,
there was an extensive one from Norway, utterly unrecorded in history but proved beyond
possibility of cavil by the researches of Mr. Robert Ferguson.2
The place names of the district prove it, - above one hundred end in the Norse termination
of "thwaite"; nearly as many end in the Norse termination "garth " or
"guard," or "gard." These names lie, not in the plain, but in the high
ground avoided by the Danish "bys," and the English "tons." The
thwaites occupy higher ground, as a rule, than the guards. Both lie thickest towards the
west of the district, thus showing the Norsemen to have entered from the west. They came
from their depot in the Isle of Man, which they had seized.

The Danes and the Norsemen brought with them
into the district a fresh wave of heathenism, the heathenism of Woden and of Thor.

Amid all these settlers and invaders, -
English, Danes, and Norse, - the Britons or Welsh of Strathclyde, Reged, and Cumbria
gradually melted into the surrounding population, and their language ceased to be
discernible as that of a separate race. But that was a slow process. Their language is
thought to have lingered in secluded places until the Reformation, when it was possibly
destroyed by the ministrations of the Protestant clergy. A few British local traditions
still remain. Pendragon Castle reminds the traveller of the fabled Ather or Uther. Some of
the mountains which adorn the landscape retain the appellations given to them by the
original population, and Skiddaw and Helvellyn now rise as the monuments of a race which
has passed away.

About the middle of the tenth century the
English put an end to the kingdom of Northumbria, and entrusted its government to a series
of Earls, of whom Siward is the best known. Siward was appointed by Edward the Confessor,
and he defeated and slew Macbeth, King of Scotland, the murderer of Duncan, King of
Scotland. Malcolm, son of the murdered monarch, was King of Cumbria. Either this Malcolm,
or his son of the same name, was placed by Siward on the throne of Scotland, and as
Malcolm Caenmore long retained both Cumbria and Strathclyde in his hands. During his
reign, however, the district of Carlisle, that is all the Cumbrian territory
south of the Solway (defined by the limits of the bishopric of Carlisle as it
existed prior to 1856), was severed from the rest of Malcolm's dominions. The date of this
is uncertain, but it would appear to be 1070, in which year, as we learn from Symeon of
Durham, Gospatric, Earl of Northumberland, over-ran that district, in revenge for the
devastation of Teesdale by the Scots. His son, Dolphin, was put in possession of the
territory thus wrenched from Malcolm's dominions, from Cumbria.

The next authentic information we have from
the Saxon Chronicle, under the date 1092:

"The king (i.e., William Rufus) went
northwards with a large army to Carlisle, where he repaired the city, built the castle,
and drove out Dolphin, who had before governed that country; and having placed a garrison
in the castle, returned south, and sent a great number of churlish folk thither, with
wives and cattle, that they might settle there and till the land."

Thus the present boundaries between England
and Scotland were established, and the district, presently to be made into the see of
Carlisle, became for the first time part of the English kingdom, and England
assumed its present geographical limits. Rufus, of course, found the site of Carlisle a
ruin, a waste chester; it had been so since Halfdene the Dane. He also introduced
a new ethnological element, Saxons from the south, and the ethnological strata in the
district would seem to be Briton (Welsh), Angle, Pict, Dane, Northman, Saxon. These
various ethnological strata indicate each a different religious wave. The heathenism of
the Britons and the heathenism introduced by the Roman legions were bathed in a wave of
Celtic Christianity, and Cumbria became a territorial part of the Celtic Church, owing
allegiance to the bishopric of Glasgow or that of Whithern while it existed. The first
English settlers brought in with them a heathen wave, the religion of Woden and of Thor.
Over this swept another wave of Christianity, from Northumbria, bringing with it the Roman
allegiance, and the Roman use, while the town of Carlisle with the parish of St. Cuthbert
Without (fifteen miles in circuit) and the district of Cartmell in Furness became by
Ecgfrid's gift part of the endowments of the bishopric of Lindisfarne and Lindisfarne's
successor, the bishopric of Durham. With the Danes and Northmen came another wave of the
worship of Woden and of Thor, feebler, probably, than its English predecessor, and too
shallow to swamp the Christianity it found before it. The Saxons imported by William Rufus
were, of course, Christians, as were the other of his followers that settled in or round
Carlisle, except a stray Jew or two whose names appear in the early Pipe Rolls.

We have already pressed into our services
the dedications of the local churches for the period prior to the advent of St. Cuthbert
in Carlisle; let us see if they help for the period between that date and the arrival of
the Red King, some 400 years (A.D. 685 to A.D. 1092), during the latter half of which
Carlisle, i.e., Caer Luguvallium, lay a waste chester, or nearly so.

To the influence of the Northumbrian Church
we may ascribe four dedications to St. Oswald, namely, Dean, Grasmere, Kirkoswald, and
Ravenstonedale, and the dedication of Westward or Ilekirk to St. Hilda. Sixteen
dedications in Cumbria commemorate St. Cuthbert: one of these is at Carlisle. We have seen
that St. Cuthbert visited Carlisle; that he preached there. Bede tells us that he held an
ordination there, and that in that city he had a meeting with his friend Herbert, the
anchorite of Derwentwater, whose name is commemorated in St. Herbert's Isle, in that
beautiful lake, where are still to be seen some fragments of the chapel that once bore his
name.3 It is probable that the church in Carlisle, dedicated
to St. Cuthbert, was founded soon after his visit. One curious piece of evidence has
hitherto been overlooked. Denton, in his manuscript History of Cumberland,4
tells us:

"The rectory of St. Cuthbert, in
Carliell, was founded by the former inhabitants of Carliell, before the Danes overthrew
the city, and by them dedicated to the honour of St. Cuthbert, of Duresm [Durham], who, of
ancient times, was lord of the same for about 15 miles round Carlisle. At the first
foundation of the church, every citizen offered a piece of money, a coin of brass then
current, which they buried under the foundation of the church steeple there, as was found
to be true at the late new re-edifying of St. Cuthbert's steeple, An. Dom. . . . for when
they took up the foundation of the old steeple, they found well near a London bushell of
that money."

These coins of copper may have been Roman,
but it would be curious if a bushel of Roman copper coin did not contain a large
proportion of first and second brasses [?], which would easily have been recognised as
Roman. The find must have consisted of Northumbrian stycas, which, prior to the Danish
invasion, were of copper, or a mixed metal. The number of them points to their having been
thrown in by a large number of persons, assembled at a great function, such a crowd as
could not be collected in Carlisle after its overthrow by Halfdene the Dane in 876; the
church of St. Cuthbert, in Carlisle, must have been founded prior to that date. A fragment
of a Saxon sepulchral cross, on which is the word SIGTTEDIS (supposed to be the name of a
female), was found in 1857 in digging foundations for an extension to the house in the
cathedral precincts now annexed to the third stall. The fragment is figured in the
Archæological journal, vol. xv. p. 85, and is assigned to the year 700. It would seem,
therefore, that there was a church on this site as early as that date, and it is quite
possible that St. Cuthbert himself was present when the stycas were showered into the
foundations of the steeple.5 The other fifteen local
dedications to St. Cuthbert are of later date. They record the translation of the saint's
body, "when, two centuries later, in obedience to his dying command, Bishop Eardulf
and his clergy, with romantic and touching faith, fled with their precious deposit from
Halfdene and his savage Danes, and, in the course of their weary seven years' migrations,
more than once crossed the hills and moorlands of Cumbria, and brought St. Cuthbert's body
within the western confines of what was afterwards claimed as his diocese. There is a
mediæval tradition of some value that wherever the bearers of St. Cuthbert's coffin made
a halt of any duration, there a church or chapel was erected bearing his name."6

Most of the churches under this dedication
probably have this origin, and from them the Rev. T. Lees, F.S.A., has traced out the
supposed route of the mournful cortège.7 The party made an
attempt to sail from Workington to Ireland, but a tempest turned the sea into blood, and
drove them back: the tempest, no doubt, stirred up a submarine deposit of hæmatite iron,
common there.

Other early dedications in the diocese are
St. Wilfrid, one church; St. Andrew, eight churches; and St. Michael, twenty-seven.
Dedications to St. Michael are very frequent in Celtic districts,

"while dedications to St. Andrew were
first introduced in the northern parts of Britain."8

These thirty-eight local churches probably
owe their foundations to dates between 685 and the advent of the Normans with William
Rufus in 1092. The other local dedications, including twenty-nine to St. Mary the Virgin,
are probably of later date. Professor Rees9 attributes the
introduction of this dedication into Wales to the Norman lords; they probably brought it
into Cumbria.

It has already been mentioned that Ecgfrid
founded a nunnery and schools at Carlisle, probably at the instigation of St. Cuthbert, to
whom some writers give the credit of being the founder of these institutions. There is
good evidence for supposing a monastery also existed there in early times. Eadred, called
Lulise from having been educated at the schools founded by St. Cuthbert there, was abbot
of a monastery there; indeed, it is probable the schools and the monastery were one and
the same: schools, monastery, and nunnery perished when the Danes destroyed Carlisle. The
same fate must have overtaken the religious house, which St. Bega probably founded on the
headland that bears her name [i.e. St. Bees]; and also the monastery at Dacor or Dacre
mentioned by Bede.

Many valuable and interesting sculptured
monuments exist to this day in Cumbria, which throw light on the religious beliefs
prevalent in that region prior to 1092. We have already mentioned the St. Keneth stone at
Dearham. In the coped tombstones, commonly called Saxon hogbacks, we have the idea, common
to various races in different parts of the world, expressed that the grave is the home of
the dead; the Romans had this idea, and used it in this country, as their tombs in the
York museum show. The Teuton had this idea. At Cross-Canonby, at Plumbland, at Aspatria,
at Lowther, at Penrith, at Bongate Appleby, and elsewhere in Cumbria we find these coped
tombstones; the world tree (Yggdrasil) of Scandinavian thought twines over them:
their curved ends descend into monstrous jaws, the jaws of Hel, Loki's daughter, Helmuth;
but the appearance of the emblem of the Holy Trinity, the triquetra among these
carved allusions to Scandinavian and heathen mythology, shows that the Christian religion
was overcoming the old heathenism, and that the dead man below was a Christian. We find
this mingling of the emblems of two religions on many cross-shafts and fragments of
cross-shafts found up and down the diocese; we find in one instance the Hell-Wolf, Fenris,
portrayed within the sort of mouldings we find on a Roman altar; on another we find, as on
the hogbacks, the Christian symbols mixed up with carved legends of Loki and of Balder. Of
the famous cross at Gosforth it has been well said that it is at once a pictorial
religious book for the heathen Scandinavian and the Christian Northumbrian. Its general
appearance at a little distance is that of a Thor's hammer on a large scale, the lower
part of the shaft being polished. A closer inspection shows the whole to be an elaborately
carved Christian cross set in a socket of three calvary steps. The world Ash (Yggdrasil),
the tree of the universe, of time and of life, covers the shaft, on which are sculptured
episodes, which the Rev. W. S. Calverley, F.S.A., thus describes:

"On the west face we have a central
Hemidall-Christ, the incarnation of the deity, holding at bay the dread offspring of
Satan, whilst Loki himself lies bound beneath, and Odin the father approaches the future.
The devil overcome. On the south side we have a central divine hart
triumphantly walking through the world unhurt by the slime and venom of the great worm of
the middle earth or by the howling dog, - the Christ, the fountain of living waters, the
incarnation of the deity who, below, rides armed to battle with, and to overcome, the
world. On the east we have a central Thor, Odin or Baldr-Christ, who fights the
last great battle and overcomes the flesh, which is crucified and pierced with
the spear; who, though the jaws of Hel gape wide and swallow him, in another
personification, - Vidar the Silent, he who opened not his mouth before his foes, rends
asunder those very gates, victorious over death and the grave, and, as we see on the north
side, rides on - the everlasting conqueror through His glorious resurrection."10

The episode of Loki bound also occurs on a
pre-Norman stone at Kirkby Stephen Church, Westmorland; and also been recently identified
upon one of the two pillars in Penrith Church, standing at head and foot of the well-known
Giant's Grave.

Those who wish to go more fully into this
most interesting subject of pre-Norman sculptured stones must consult the papers of Mr.
Calverley, in the fifth and succeeding volumes of the Transactions of the Cumberland and
Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society. To Mr. Calverley is due the credit of
having been the first to interpret these lapidary pages of local history, and he has
kindly furnished the little table at the end of this chapter.

No inscriptions in the Ogham characters used
by the Celts are known in the district; inscriptions in the Teutonic runes exist. There is
one on a gravestone at Dearham Church, which Professor Stephens assigns to A.D. 850-950;
it is covered with Christian symbolism, and the Professor reads the runes

Adam,
May Christ his soul save.

There is a runic inscription on a
cross-shaft at Beckermet, which has been read to refer to Bishop Tuda, the successor of
Colman, but this reading is doubtful, and the runes are probably of a later period. There
is another on a font at Bridekirk, which has sculptured on it the baptism of our Saviour;
this refers to one Richard as its maker: from the Bolden book he is known to have
flourished about 1160. Then we have the famous cross at Bewcastle, bearing the figure of
our Saviour, and runic inscriptions: this, Professor Stephens assigns to the seventh
century, but Miss Margaret Stokes to a period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries,
judging from its analogy to instances of early Christian art in Ireland.

APPENDIX.

By the Rev. W. S. CALVERLEY, F.S.A.

PRE-NORMAN SCULPTURES, DIOCESE OF CARLISLE.

List No. I. comprises sculptured stones
of the period embracing the work of SS. Ninian and Patrick.

List No. II. covers the time of S.
Kentigern, anti thence we pass to Nos. III., IV., &c., to the Lindisfarne School and
to sculptures containing various mythological subjects, according to the tone of thought
of the natives and of the different settlers amongst them.

No. I. - White Sandstone: Generally having a boss in the centre of the crosshead,
surrounded by a raised circle or by a circle of bosses. Ornamented with spiral work, often
designed to show three curves together as a sign of the Holy Trinity. Also spiral work
with interlacing bands, interspersed with bosses or pellets and the curved Triskele, the
Svastika, and the S-shaped symbol, with scroll-work, the key pattern, or plaitwork, on the
edges. Drawn with a free hand :- Beckermet, Hale, S. Bees, Workington, Distington,
Dearham, Cross-Canonby, Plumbland, Bridekirk, Aspatria, Bromfield, Brigham, Isell.

1. Trumwine was probably Bishop of
Abercorn, and not of Whithern. See Haddon and Stubbs' "Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents," vol. ii. pt. i. p. 7 n. Green, in his History, makes him of Whithern.2. "Northmen in Cumberland and Westmorland," by Robert Ferguson,
F.S.A. London: Longman & Co., 1856. See also "Lakeland and Iceland," by Rev.
T. Ellwood. - Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society's
Transactions, vol. ix. p. 383.3. "St. Herbert of Derwentwater," Rev. T. Lees. - Cumberland
and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society's Transactions, vol. vi. p.
338. "Church Dedications in Diocese of Carlisle," Ibid., vol. vii. p. 122.4. Now published by the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and
Archæological Society, Tract Series, No. II. p. 97. It was written in 1610.5. It may be suggested that this fragment belongs to the burial ground of
St. Mary's parish, and proves the antiquity of a church on the site of the cathedral. Not
so. The place of the find is nearer the St. Cuthbert's ground than the St. Mary's.
Moreover, a church would not be, in a Celtic district, dedicated to St. Mary so early as
the year 700.6. "Church Dedications in Diocese of Carlisle," by Precentor
Venables. - Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society's
Transactions, vol. vii. pp. 122, 130.7. "The Translation of St. Cuthbert." - Cumberland and
Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society's Transactions, vol. ii. p. 14.8. Mr. Skene, cited by Precentor Venables ut ante.9. Cited by Precentor Venables. "Church Dedications," ut
ante.10. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archæological
Society, vol. vi. pp. 373, 400.